Firefox lost 50M users since 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#361

Post by littlecranky67 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

sleavey wrote: post #167

csmpltn wrote: post #126

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now. My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated. The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A…

Just to give a contrasting data point: I always see people complaining about resource consumption in Firefox in these threads, but I have honestly almost never had trouble like this and I use it for hours every day with lots of tabs and lots of rich media websites open. It happened more in the past (maybe 5+ years ago), but I am sure some of the blame in those cases would have been down to Flash. Now that I think mor…

This might not be the fault of Firefox. The problem is that Chrome is the most used browser even amongst web-devs, so you tend to profile/benchmark your site in that browser and optimize for it.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#362

Post by littlecranky67 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #324

agumonkey wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have 1200 tabs open but I noticed more lag around above 800. That said my computer are far from last gen and I wouldn't blame mozilla for not supporting 1000+ tab hoarders anyway. But yeah firefox is not bloated even when abused. that said I despised the UI redesigns and the recent FTP kill.. I want a broswer, not a fashion magazine

can you explain what the value is of having that many tabs open? i hear people do this but never understood it. what's the point?

There is no value to it, this is what happens when you don't know what bookmarks are for.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#363

Post by mmis1000 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

gorhill wrote: post #156

csmpltn wrote: post #126

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now. My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated. The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A…

> The slowness and slugishness. Mozilla has a nice tool to help identify sources of "slowness and slugishness"[1], you may want to give it a try -- oftentimes it's found that the issue is not Firefox itself, but some extensions, external processes, or undesirable modifications in `about:config`. --- [1] https://profiler.firefox.com/

That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some improvements to help the user reading the results.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#364

Post by bzbarsky » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

bluedevil2k wrote: post #111

freediver wrote: post #11

Fun fact: Under current conditions (200M users) it looks like Google is paying $2-2.25 per active user annually to be the default search engine in Firefox. "Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google in 2020 for three years. The organization will receive an estimate of $400 to $450 million per year from the deal alone. " https://www.ghacks.net/2020/12/10/mozillas-revenue-jumped-to...

Given how they make a minimum $450M a year in revenue, how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their expenses be?

How many developers do you think a browser engine needs? How much do they cost?

But also, the answer to your question is at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201... and https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-2019-fo... (the 2020 numbers are not up yet because the audit starts when the tax return is filed and lasts for several months, so isn't completed yet).

Just for comparison, last I checked Chrome's marketing budget was estimated to be in the ballpark of Mozilla's total budget.

Disclaimer: used to work for Mozilla.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#365

Post by croes » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #341

croes wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is totally killing my workflow.

You can still disable this via some chrome://flags tweaking 2 column tabs sadly no more... Why they think this is better UX is beyond me

Yep, it's still possible but they are disabling these flags one by one.

I don't get it, why they force the grouping instead of making it optional. Without tweaking it's impossible to just open a link in another tab.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#366

Post by verdverm » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #365

verdverm wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still disable this via some chrome://flags tweaking 2 column tabs sadly no more... Why they think this is better UX is beyond me

Yep, it's still possible but they are disabling these flags one by one. I don't get it, why they force the grouping instead of making it optional. Without tweaking it's impossible to just open a link in another tab.

I'm starting to see the benefit in it, in that I will use it less and get life time back

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#367

Post by jl2718 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

One small thing: Firefox developer edition can’t edit files like chrome or their old firebug plugin. Therefore, apps get developed on chrome; therefore, they work better on chrome.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#368

Post by heurisko » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #233

csmpltn wrote: post #126

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now. My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated. The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A…

Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is totally killing my workflow.

I switched from chrome to firefox on Android for this reason.

It is behaviour that has earned many recent one star reviews.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.ch...

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#369

Post by abrowne » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

FractalParadigm wrote: post #282

gibba999 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My child's school uses Google Classroom. The Google experience is unusable in Firefox. Meet doesn't work (e.g. he sees nothing when the teacher screenshares). This seems really quite anti-competitive. My child cares about privacy and switches browsers. Chrome for Meet, Firefox for most non-Google things.

I was having crazy issues in GDrive and GDocs where I could download nothing using FF - no PDFs, no .docx files, none of my other backed-up files, you'd click download and nothing would happen. Do the same in Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, even changing my user-agent to Chrome, and it works flawlessly. My solution to this problem was move everything off GDrive and into self-hosted options. If Google is going to intenti…

Do you block third-party cookies? It prevents Drive downloads in any browser with that setting, Chrom{e,ium} included. Recently I saw Drive give a suggestion about this, but a year ago when I was testing third-party cookie blocking in Chromium it took me a day or two before I figured out the connection.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#370

Post by meibo » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

mmis1000 wrote: post #358

judge2020 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anti competitive behavior Have some examples? On Desktop, I don't see any, but I would get if you mean Mobile since Chrome is still the default browser there for Android.

Google sheets used to be broken `BASED ON USER AGENT`. https://support.google.com/docs/thread/18235069/google-sheet... After i found that spoof browser agent fixed it. They locked the thread coincidentally and the bug is also fixed coincidentally a few days after. I don't know if it is really a coincident, but I definitely have 0 trust of them after it.

It's common to work around browser bugs like this.

I wouldn't blame some possible hack a tired dev implemented on a busy Thursday on a grand scheme to strip you of your freedom - in the end it's just people working there. Especially seeing that the bug was fixed after someone complained/made them aware.